I'm the Founder and Managing Partner of Ironfire Capital LLC, which runs a tech-focused hedge fund and angel fund. I did a Ph.D. in Management at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York, with a specialization in Strategic Management. You can follow me on Twitter @ericjackson, subscribe to me on Facebook, follow me on Sina Weibo, or Circle me on Google+. My email is: dr.eric.jackson@me.com

89 Business Cliches That Will Get Any MBA Promoted And Make Them Totally Useless

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** Update: Some people couldn’t stop themselves from opening their kimonos after they read the original list. You really put your thinking caps on. You decided to chime in with some cliche classics of your own. We’re all on the same team here, rowing in the same direction, and it’s not about me, it’s about us, so see many worthy additions to this cliche list in the comments below. Thanks to everyone circling back to me with your comments. All hands were on deck for this activity. Let’s take the time to celebrate this important team win! **

If you’re an MBA at Business School right now, stop studying for that Accounting test next week. I’m going to make it much easy for you to succeed in your career.

Assuming you get your MBA, you’re going to have a basic requisite degree on your resume when applying for most managerial jobs. So, what’s going to ensure you get the job and then get promoted to middle management? Well, aside from combing your hair, brushing your teeth, and wearing nice looking clothes to the interview, you’ve got to be able to speak well.

We all laugh at how the managers in Dilbert or on the The Office constantly spew cliches that don’t seem to mean anything. But those parodies shed light on a basic truth: some tired management cliches will impress enough people that they’ll probably help you get promoted to middle management.

Of course, if you really become a samurai master of using all 89 of these cliches, you probably have no hope of moving up to upper management, because your mind and vocabulary will be filled with complete and utter nonsense.

Then again, for those of you who are believers in the “fake it until you make it” approach to career progression, maybe your self-mastery of these cliches will baffle your bosses so much that, eventually, they’ll let you into the inner sanctum of senior management.

My advice, however, would be for you to avoid all of these hackneyed phrases and find a more original way of talking/thinking about the problems you’re facing.

Here are the 89 biggest cliches that will help you get promoted to middle management because they’ll make you sound like you know a lot about how organizations operate (along with my handy translations). When possible, you should use these in team meetings or in front of your bosses who will have a say in promoting you:

1. It’s a paradigm shift = I don’t know what’s going on in our business. But we’re not making as much money as we used to.

2. We’re data-driven = We try not to make decisions by the seat of our pants. When possible, we try to base them in facts.

3. We need to wrap our heads around this = Gosh, I never thought of that. We need to discuss that….

4. It’s a win-win = Hey, we both get something out of this (even though I’m really trying to get the best from you)

5. ROI [used in any sentence] = Look at me, I’m very financially-minded, even if I never took any finance classes in school

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